Originally Posted by
shorthauldad
This depends how far ahead you book. If we look a long way out you can see LHR-NCL for £67 on almost every flight of the day.
To turn one of the those £67 fares into semi flex costs you an additional £93, so as I pointed out earlier, in those circumstances it's cheaper to buy two separate non-flex tickets if it's only about "the last flight" vs "the last-but-one flight".
windowontheAside makes a good point, but we all know expense controllers are idiots
For me I can rarely book more than a week in advance so those £67 fares are a rare occurrence for me, although in that instance I'd probably just bag the bargain and spend the extra time in the lounge rather than buying two tickets.
A more realistic timescale for me would be booking today for this Friday (I'm not going to Newcastle this weekend but it's an example).
BA 1338 (last flight of the day) is currently £144, the other flights that day are more expensive being between £160 and £200. The two preceding flights to mine are both £180.
Upgrade to semi flex is £16 and also gets me 20 TP (books into H class - have to keep pointing out that it's only domestics where the cheapest semi-flex gets 20 TP) so even if I don't need the earlier flight I get an extra 10 TP for £16.
So this extra £16 lets me effectively move to a more expensive flight on the day should it work out more convenient for me.
I do like having some flexibility but don't like the fully flex fares of either the airlines or the rail companies but these semi-flex tickets are a good compromise.